Monday, October 18, 2010

After many hours of wrangling our lawyer got a copy of the DHS's "Individual Service Plan" for myself and my husband. It's a hoot. Counselors we've shown this to have hit the roof. It only has one signature attached to it, and that isn't anyone I've seen or talked to. Each section has a different date, and a different due date. Everything is out of compliance with the official state practices. Some of it is against state law, other parts of itare against official insurance practices. Some of it isn't even worded in complete sentences.

Part 1 says:

"...will correct her home deficiencies to corrrect but arenot(sp) limited to replaceing the dead bolt lock"

This is:

1) ungrammatical,

2) incorrectly spelled, and

3) the deadbolt lock they want me to remove is next to a front door window that's already been broken into before. The insurance people would hit the roof over that!

Part 2 wants the children's medical/dental records BUT doesn't offer to pay for them. I learned today that's not kosher.

Part 3 says:

"...will provide proof/confirmation that the children's educational needs are being met."

That's ILLEGAL in Mississippi.

Part 4:

"the dead bolt will be replaced with a safer type of lock..."

DHS, meet insurance people. Insurance people, meet DHS.

There's no "client" signature. There's no "social worker" signature. There is an "ASWS" signature -- but no date. I was told that the ASWS is the social worker supervisor. BUT the person who signed in the "ASWS signature" slot is not a social worker supervisor. She's not even a social worker. Melody Hamilton, who has the only signature on the entire document that they faxed our lawyer, is a student intern working in their office.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

We emailed the FBI and some support and media outlets today. Please suggest anyone you can think of.

ETA: I'm Debbie Byrd Shinn. The women who contacted me who said they were from DHS named themselves Patti Young, Natasha Ivory, and Joyce Cook. None of those names are in the MS Employee registery: http://dsitspe01.its.ms.gov/its/webphone.nsf/Home?OpenForm

Ever since the activity started at the trailer next door, dh smelled a lot of ammonia and organic solvents in the evening. He originally put it down to remodeling. He also remembers being asked if he could show somebody how to "cook something" last year. "Cook what?" he asked puzzled.

Here is a letter my husband prepared for the FBI. Please forward it to any parties who might be interested:

Over the last several weeks my wife has been the subject of an harassment campaign.

She has blogged this at crabby-lioness.livejournal.com

Most of this happens when I am not at home.

This began with a daylight breaking and entry, and what was suggested by the county attorney to be an attemptedkidnapping of our son. And the telephone went dead 1 hour before all this. (No reply from PSC.)

Deputy Jimmy Rappe,in no uniform, but acting as such still, refused to look at the door, but told my wife DHS would respond; he was interested only in the child being out of the house, and told her not to lock the door.

The sheriff’s dept. knows about the evidence of the break-in, but have never picked it up from the Okolona police.

DHS blames my wife for letting the baby out of the house, as if this break-in never happened. The county attourney even suggested this was an attempted kidnapping; we have asked him as well to have this investigated.

One day after that when my family was with relatives in another county, Chris Ware Chickasaw SD, called me at work,that there was an emergency at my house, that some of my family were inside injured, and no one would come to thedoor. I told him no one was at home. He and DHS said they did not believe me. I said if anyone was in my house, they had broken in, and asked Ware to investigate the windows and doors – he refused. Okolona police recommended we get a civil rights attorney at this point, but none up here will take our case.

More items of harassment came in a steady trickle as we tried to find a way to move.

Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010, our home was entered shortly after we left. About 45 minutes after we left, 3:27 pm,someone called my telephone, and a stranger inside picked up. They discussed and viewed my wife’s medical records,which we found by the telephone. Our attorney did not want us to report this, and it does seem a little pointless since an Okolona policeman thinks one of the voices is Jimmy Rappe, of the Chickasaw SD.

His mother lives next door (see the trailer story following) and has made threatening statements before.

Please read her further descriptions and help us end this harassment.

I suspect something is going on over at the trailer near us; it was almost abandoned until about 2 months ago.

I have smelled ammonia and strong organic solvents (I have a degree in chemistry) from that direction since.

One night, several people came down, turned off the outside light, carried boxes into the pitch-black interior, then emerged with even more boxes, coming down steps and loading these into vehicles in total darkness. Something is going on.

We have removed from the house, as we deem it no longer safe.

Please, please, read her further descriptions and help us end this harassment.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Hi folks. Thanks for the info and the kind messages. I've been out of pocket recently. So far so good.

First up -- here is the link for a copy the message I found on my answering machine Saturday night:

http://filebucket.info/?1oo0r81rh

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EDBCGQXQ

And a big THANK YOU to the cybergeeks who did that for me. If you want to help and have the ability, please mirror that for me. I'll add your links in later.

If you would, please someone make a slideshow using the audio and the transcript I posted earlier and post it to youtube. Please mirror that as well, and forward to anyone who might be interested in civil rights. Thank you.

Second -- DHS

According to the lawyer we hired to handle the DHS end, he spent three hours badgering them before they would even admit to having my name in their files. Then they wanted a release form. Then they spent even more hours giving him the runaround -- wrong person, wrong office, wrong directions et al. Then when he asked them to write down the complaint, they said a bunch of hooey but have so far refused to put anything in writing. ('m not surprised, because they never gave us anythign in writing either.) Some of the hooey isn't even legal in Mississippi.

They complained --

the house isn't clean enough, even though we cleaned it to their earlier (verbal) specs and got their (verbal) approval;

the floor isn't fixed, even though we repaired it to their earlier (verbal) specs and got their (verbal) approval;

(There was a background sense that we weren't acting "White enough", that we weren't living the way people of our socio-economic standing should live. That instead of buying a trailer and some land in the country, and building extensions as we went along, we should have "properly" bought a pre-made house in the suburbs and tied ourselves down with a huge mortgage. That we should buy all-new furniture instead of taking care of the old stuff we have. Apparently one can't be frugal and be a "good" person.

Some of the property is old, but it's all in good shape. The additions were built at above US Navy standards.);

that our homeschooled children needed to be tested to see if they were learning enough. THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. Homeschooled children in Mississippi have to meet no testing requirements whatsoever: http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Mississippi.pdf In fact:

"It is not the intention of this section to impair the primary right and the obligation of the parent ... to choose the proper education and training" for their children, and nothing in this section shall be construed to grant the State of Mississippi "authority to control, manage or supervise" the private education of children. "And this section shall never be construed so as to grant, by implication or otherwise, any right or authority to any state agency or other entity to control, manage, supervise, provide for or affect the operation, management, program, curriculum, admissions policy or discipline of any such school or home instruction program." Miss. Code Ann. § 37-13-91(9).

(The funny part of this is that when they asked to see the girls' schoolwork and I showed them their Singapore Math notebooks, Patti Young, aka DHS-1, couldn't even read the problems correctly out of my 9yo's workbook, and declared the 11yo's workbook was above her head.);

that our children need to be given a medical exam and vaccinated. Okay, we were holding off to see how the mercury content in modern vaccines was being handled, but the kids are old enough they may be safe. (I had an extremely bad reaction to an MMR shot once, and I was 21 at the time.) Still THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. Only children entering the school system have to be vaccinated. http://www.msdh.state.ms.us/msdhsite/_static/14,0,71.html

(Also there was an issue with the age of the vaccines. I was at the County Health Clinic one day when a batch of "fresh" vaccines arrived and was left sitting on the reception counter. They were already out of date and had been culled from another medical center, with all the proper markers for rejects. This sort of thing does not inspire confidence.);

that I am "too depressed" to "properly watch my children" or to "properly homeschool". THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. There's no requirements for homeschool teachers in our state;

that I should send them a copy of any lease I sign anywhere else so they can check out my new home and so they can transfer my case instead of closing it.

They said (but didn't put in writing) that if I moved they would drop the case. That doesn't jive with the above statement.

The lawyer wants to comply with all this. I suspect much of it will actually evaporate when they have to put it in writing.

Third -- the matter of the break-ins and the Sherrif's Department's actions. We're still working on this end. Everyone who hears about it is horrified, but most don't want to get involved.

Gotta go. Please pass this story along to any homeschool advocates, including Mississippi homeschool advocates, the Mississippi state senator who chairs the education committee, and anyone else who may be interested. Thanks.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

I haven't talked much about the trailer next door. Normally I don't think much about it, but with all this trouble coming from that direction I'm reminded that things have been odd over there lately.

It's been abandoned for years, but the week before school starts there's a lot of activity going on over there. Lots of people in and out, lots of banging and remodeling noises going on, so much that I didn't notice anything odd about the banging noises the day our door was broken open.

Then there's the people, who gathered together to talk at the back door instead of the front door, the back door that can only be seen from our back yard. At least they did until the day the baby watched them, three days before this mess started. They watched me take him in. They haven't gathered at either door since then.

Then there's the inside lights, which are never on over there anymore, even though they seemed to be working fine the last time anybody lived there.

Then there's the night a whole bunch of people came over with a whole bunch of boxes. They turned off the outside lights, took a lot of boxes in, then took even more boxes out. Funny thing was they did it in complete darkness, with neither the inside or outside lights on, even though that meant negotiating stairs and uneven terrain in the dark.

Then there's the morning Bozo, the guy who lives there, cut across his front yard like he was coming to our front door. He saw me in the window, stopped, turned and glared at the street, then got in his truck and left. We'd been having a rash of damaged doorknobs about then.

We went to see a lawyer we've had dealings with before today. Usually when he calls us up on Sunday he asks us to come over in the late morning. This time he wants to see us first at 6, then at 6:30.

When we reach his office, there's a campaign sign in the front yard for the County Attorney who won't return our calls.

We tell him about yesterday's break-in and the rest of the story while he texts. He doesn't want to get a subpoena to find out who called our house. He says the answering machine tape isn't the sort of evidence that will stand up in court. Only DNA evidence or pictures will.

(That's funny because when we were robbed two years ago the burglar cut himself on the glass of the window getting in and bled all over the floor. The Sheriff's Department refused to take a blood sample when we asked them to.)

He offers to help us deal with DHS. We take him up on it.

When we get home we find out that he was right. The answering machine won't stand up in court. Because while we were at his office someone broke into our front door and erased our answering machine, including the copy of the message that was on it.

There's some middle details, but we'll skip to the juicy bits. I'll fill them in later if I have the time.

Friday October 8

2:00

DHS-2 comes to our house. We've had problems with finding both the front and back door locks hanging half out of the door over the past few weeks (as well as both damage and cigarette butts in the backyard) so I've taken to locking the double-locked deadbolt all the time. Friday it's cranky from everything the door's been through and won't unlock for me. I go out the back door and come round the front to talk to DHS-2.

I tell her we're looking at houses nearer to where dh works, but they all need alterations. (We have two dozen poultry and henhouses are no longer standard issue.) The best looking one turned out to have problems on closer inspection, and may take months of repairs to get into shape, so we might not be able to move until spring.

DHS-2 expresses the hope that we would have already moved "So we won't have to involve the judge." She won't explain what she meant by that.

Previously she had brought boxes from the dollar store's leftovers to help me pack. I ask for more. She's surprised I've actually used the ones she brought. (Well duh, I have to pack for five people!) She says she'll be over with more boxes Tuesday or Wednesday.

Saturday October 9

2:45 we leave on a picnic and to do our monthly canned goods run. When we get home there's a strange message on our answering machine. According to *69, the call came at 3:27 yesterday afternoon and was from "662(local area code)/000-0000".

I'll try to upload the message later, but here's what we've been able to make out.

Male 1-Let me know cause I'm saying all you can commit -- if you bring a petula(?) it's going to be, "Hey you." Because she can't go out and commit the people but she can write them up. And you know, everybody should be told to bring somebody. So you know, you're paying for it.

Male 2-So you want me to tell her that, that I talked to you about it already right?

1-Uh-huh

2-Who?

1-I don't have nothing.

2-Who?

2-Oh, okay

1- I told her that.

2-Okay.

Female-Not Medicaid.

Male 3-Man I know a beep came on, that's all I heard.

1-Might be a blue card.

3-I guess.

Coincidentally(!) a medical record from the baby's birth was laying out of its folder on the counter about two feet from the phone with my husband's state-run Blue Cross health insurance number on it. We haven't had that folder open in over a year.

According to one source who wishes to remain anonymous who's heard the message, the male voices sound like members of the Sheriff's Department and the County Attorney's office.

We've talked to lawyers. We haven't found one who wants to touch this case. They say you take cases against the Sheriff's Department to the Attorney General. They also say the Attorney General's office won't do anything.

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house. He says the Sheriff's Department won't return his calls. The police are asking questions at the telephone relay station.

Tuesday August 24.

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house. The Sheriff's Department still won't return his calls, and won't return calls from the police about the incident. The police tell them to come pick up the doorknob for evidence. They refuse. The telephone relay station refuses to talk to the police about our phone.

Wednesday August 25.

Dh calls from a cellphone. Good Buddy's phone has gone dead in the same way ours did. Good Buddy is a certified electrician. He traces the problem back to the phone being switched off at the relay station.

The Sheriff's Department won't return our calls. The relay station won't answer the cops' questions. Dh calls the County Attorney. He refuses to discuss the case. The cops call the Sheriff's Department. All they'll talk about is DHS-1 giving us 30 (not 25) days to clean the house. They refuse to discuss the doorknob or come get it.

Thursday August 26.

Morning

We don't actually find out what happened in the morning until days later. Mean Sister called the Sheriff's Department. She reported hearing me yelling at the children inside the house we hadn't been in since Sunday morning. She said the children screamed, she heard thumps, then silence.

What we heard was that the Sheriff's Deputy-2 (not Bozo), DHS-1, and DHS-3 come out to our house. Of course the house is locked and they can't get in. DHS-1 later said that DHS-3 said she saw a face at the window that looked like my younger daughter. They don't break in to investigate.

They call dh at work and demand he come home and open the door for them. "Home" is 90 minutes away. Dh calls and tells us what he knows. He gets home, tracks down Sheriff's Deputy-2, and unlocks the door and demands the Deputy search the house for the intruder the Deputy said was there earlier. The Deputy complies with a sick grin. Of course there's no one there.

DHS-1 demands that the children be seen by a Sheriff. Our relative calls the Sheriff of the county we're in at the time. He's a proper Sheriff (not like Bozo and company) and immediately comes out to investigate. I tell him this story and show him the baby's unburned feet, as well as the girls. He says he'll call.

Friday Morning.

The Proper Sheriff calls back to tell us DHS-1 is on her way. Seems she forgot to interview the girls. She says "of course" our safety has to come first. (That's the first -- and last -- time this idea is expressed.) She interviews the girls. According to our older daughter she asks about what TV shows they like (they hardly watch any) and their favorite movie. (DD-1 is annoyed she doesn't ask about favorite books.) Then she asked how we punished the girls and what their homeschool day was like. She leaves.

Friday afternoon we go home.

Then there's a frenzy of house-cleaning and home repairs. We fix everything they told us to fix. DHS doesn't acknowledge this fact. For the next two weeks their questions revolve around when we can move out of the house, the girls' homeschooling, and my mental health. They want me to give them my records and be evaluated by their counselor. I demur.

Hi folks. We've had a pretty horrible school year so far. DHS showed up at our door, in a story that gets scarier and more bizarre the further along it goes. Here's how it started:

Introduction

14 years ago we moved to where we live now. Dh started teaching high school, and I started having babies. It's just outside town limits, and there's not many neighbors. At that time we had one good neighbor on one side of us. She was an older woman caring for her elderly mother who lived in the trailer between us, a "Granny cottage" to use the Australian term. We got along well, and I had many pleasant visits to her house -- except for one visit. Her grown nephew came over while I was there. I greeted him politely, and was abruptly told that as a female I was unworthy to be breathing the same air as he was, let alone talking to him -- only in shorter and ruder terms. I chose not to embarrass my Good Neighbor by asking about Bozo after he left.

Years pass, my Good Neighbor's mother dies, and my Good Neighbor moves to another town leaving the two houses beside me to her Mean Sister, who is Bozo's mother. Mean Sister is dogmatic and close-minded. She can't stand any woman who doesn't work and put her children in day care, or anyone who disagrees with her own far-right conservative views. My children and I are no longer welcome at her house. Still, we stay on amiable terms by never exchanging more than a dozen words at a time.

Over the years the trailer between us that was her mother's retirement home gets used as a crash pad by various relatives down on their luck until they either find another place to live or simply can't stand Mean Sister any longer. We're used to having people pull up to it, stay for a while, and leave.

Last year the public high school where my husband works has a meltdown and gets taken over by the state. He scrambles and finds a job at a community college 90 minutes away. All this is widely talked about in the town where we live, as he's a popular teacher and the parents didn't want to see him leave. It's a very stressful time for us. Maybe people expected us to pack up and leave immediately, but we were too busy to even start looking for a place to move.

The school year starts. I'm busier than ever, what with two dogs, four ducks, two dozen chickens, two homeschooled children, a toddler, and getting dh off every morning. I sorta notice people moving in and out of the trailer next door, but I don't think much of it -- except to notice that when they gather together to talk at the door, as people are inclined to do before leaving, they don't gather at the front door. They gather at the back door, which can only be seen from our fenced-in back yard. One Thursday evening shortly after school starts the toddler comes with me when I go out to water the birds. He stands at the fence and stares at the group gathered round the back door. I scoop him up when I go back inside, but otherwise pay them no attention. I'm more concerned about the fact that they've taken out the old refrigerator and left it behind the trailer with the door standing open, and glad our children stay inside our fence.

The next Saturday all hell breaks loose.

Day 1: Saturday August 21, 2010

9:00 - The Natchez Trace Visitor's Center hosts a nature photography program in the morning. My husband and the girls go to see it and do some shopping afterward, leaving the toddler and I behind to catch up on our rest. We're in the middle of a heat wave, with the temperature over 100F every day, and the photographers hope the program doesn't get cut short due to the heat. It's going to be another scorcher.

12:00 - I check email. After a few moments, the (land-based) internet connection goes down. I think nothing of it, as this has happened before.

1:15 - I finish the scarf I'm knitting for one daughter and take it up front with the toddler following me. I go to the back of the house for the yarn for my other daughter's scarf. The toddler doesn't follow me. Perhaps he got distracted looking out the front window to see if the car is back yet. He does that a lot.

I hear a strange man's voice in my house.

The doors and windows are locked. How is there a strange man in my house? And more important -- where's my baby?

The man says that my toddler was found playing outside, in spite of the fact that the doors and windows are locked and the baby can't open them. I run out the open door and there's my baby in Mean Sister's arms. She yells at me that the baby was found playing in the road, she's called DHS, and I'm in "a world of trouble young woman!" There's something wrong with that statement but I can't put my finger on it at the moment.

I take my child and say that I'm going home to deadbolt my door. Mean Sister yells, "Don't deadbolt the door! Get another lock, but don't deadbolt it!" Weird.

I take the baby home and look him over. He's fine. That's weird for some reason too, but I'm more concerned about the door right then.

Obviously the regular lock failed. Because the door has a window in it that can't be secured, we have a double-sided deadbolt in it. Otherwise a thief would reach through the window and throw the lock. I get my keys to lock it.

While I'm trying to find the right key (I'd forgotten dh had borrowed it a while back) who should come up to my door but Mean Sister's son Bozo, whom I haven't spoken to in years. He says he's a Sheriff's Deputy now, although he's not in uniform and he shows me no ID. (I later found out he was hired on when the regular Deputies were shipped off to Iraq with their Reserve units.) He tells me that DHS is coming, but I tell him I'm more concerned about getting the door locked. I notice that the regular doorknob has been pulled almost completely out of the door frame, the door frame is cracked even with the regular lock, the bottom of the door is kicked inward, and the frame of the door window has been yanked almost apart. I point all this out to him. He yells, "Don't lock the deadbolt!"

1:45 Dh and the older children come home, wet, muddy, and grinning from their nature photography walk. I tell dh what happened. He drops the groceries he's carrying on the floor and goes to check the baby.

1:55 A woman who identifies herself as DHS arrives (henceforth to be known as DHS-1), although she shows no identification. Coincidentally, her last name is the same as Mean Sister's mother who used to live in that trailer. It's not a common last name in our area.

DHS-1 says she heard the baby was playing in the middle of the road on the yellow line and wants to see the baby. That's when it hits me -- it's over 100F outside (102F we later learn.) My tender-footed baby is barefoot, as he usually is at home. There are no burns on his feet. There are no marks of any kind on his feet. How could he have made it to the middle of an asphalt highway?

I point this out to DHS-1. She ignores it. I point out the door being damaged. She ignores that as well.

Meanwhile, dh has taken the doorknob off the door and replaced it. The knob shows clear signs of tampering. He shows it around. The Sheriff's Deputy isn't interested. DHS-1 isn't interested. Since we live right outside the city limits, he calls the cops. The phone isn't working. He leaves to show it to the cops.

DHS-1 complains that there are canned goods in the floor from the groceries my husband brought in, that the girls are dirty from their nature walk, that not all the power outlets have baby blockers on them, and that there are a couple of soft spots in the floor. She wants to take pictures. I refuse.

DHS-1 wants to know if I have ever been treated for depression. Yes. She wants the records. I refuse.

Dh returns. The police are concerned about the doorknob. DHS-1 still is not. DHS-1 leaves, telling us we have 25 days to get the house cleaned and the floor fixed.

What with all the upset, it's nightfall before I get around to mentioning to dh that the internet went down right before this started. Dh teaches computer building and maintenance classes. He gets out his kit and checks the line. He reports back that there's 1/10th volt on the line, and the only thing that could have caused that would be if it were deliberately switched off at the relay station.

Dh goes over to Good Buddy's house to make phone calls. He calls the cops. They say, "Get out. Get out now. It's not safe." He calls a relative in another county for shelter.

About Me

I'm a liberal Pagan classical homeschooling mother living in small-town Mississippi. If that hasn't crossed your wires yet, read on. I'm interested in things that help people make informed individualized choices in every aspect of their lives, including education, religion, ecconomics, aesthetics and so on. To see my silversmithing, go to Brigid's Forge